The wiry magician with wispy white hair stood before a conference of
Polish chemists and tore an issue of Pravda in half, to audible gasps in those days
before Gdansk, only to produce it whole again a moment later. He has reversed
the stripes on handkerchiefs and joined pieces of rope for, among others, the
Crown Prince of Japan, the Lord Mayor of Sheffield and cardinals at the Vatican.
The sleight-of-hand artist is Koji Nakanishi, Centennial Professor of
Chemistry at Columbia and one of the world's best-known bioorganic chemists.
He has studied red tide toxins, insect and crab molting hormones, shark
repellents, and wasp and snake venoms, often suggesting commercial or
therapeutic uses for them in nearly 700 research papers in a career that now
spans more than 50 years.
His reputation as a magician has been boosted by his friend, Stanford
chemist and novelist Carl Djerassi, whose short story about Professor
Nakanishi's exploits features a thinly-disguised magician-chemist of Japanese
extraction. "The character's name is Jiko Nishinaka, but everyone knows it's
Koji Nakanishi," Dr. Djerassi said.
At chemistry symposia, dry academic meetings and formal banquets, he
will pull out a small bag of tricks and set attendees at ease. "Magic always
relaxes the atmosphere, especially after these big, formal conferences," said
Professor Nakanishi, who came to Columbia in 1969 and maintains contact with
some 300 former graduate students. "Almost invariably, my magic is more
remembered than my lectures."
Not a month goes by without a Nakanishi performance. After receiving the
prestigious Welch Award in chemistry, one of dozens of prizes he has claimed, he
entertained some 200 guests at the Welch Foundation's banquet last October in Houston - with magic. On May 2, he delivered the Schering-Plough Lecture at
the SUNY-Stony Brook campus on Long Island - and performed magic. He will
deliver a paper at the American Society of Mass Spectroscopy in Denver the first
week of June - and do magic. More conferences, lectures and magic acts dot the
summer calendar.
One of his favorite illusions is to place a spectator in a cloth bag, tie the bag
tightly, have the knot signed to prove it has not been tampered with and place the
spectator behind a screen. After a minute, the spectator reappears holding the
bag, which is passed around for inspection to show there are no openings.
At a Gordon Research Conference in New Hampshire some 10 years ago,
the illusion backfired. Before about 100 colleagues, Professor Nakanishi drew the
cloth bag around an attendee, John Partridge, and tied the bag. Dr. Partridge
played a trick on the magician, however, and when he reappeared, to the
astonishment of all, it was without any clothes at all.
"I was there and saw it, although I still have trouble believing it," said John
Clardy, Horace White Professor of Chemistry at Cornell. "As an aside, I believe
that Koji was as surprised as anyone that Partridge didn't have clothes on. He
was, however, holding a small gong to preserve some level of modesty."
At a symposium to celebrate Professor Nakanishi's 70th birthday in May
1995, the chemist-magician took the stage in the Rotunda of Low Memorial
Library to deliver a short address - and do magic. Assembled as his assistants
were five respected organic chemists: Duilio Arigoni of ETH Zurich, Yoshito
Kishi of Harvard, Jerrold Meinwold of Cornell, Guy Ourisson of the University of
Strasbourg and A. Ian Scott of Texas A & M University.
"The master magician enlisted some of the world's most eminent organic
chemists to serve as his apprentices," said Roy K. Okuda, professor of chemistry
at San Jose State University and a former Nakanishi postdoctoral student. "It
was quite a performance."
Magic can be a tool to communicate with others, says Professor Nakanishi,
who has taught simple tricks to colleagues and graduate students, often watching
a retiring scientist bloom into a facile entertainer.
"I think Koji is a delight to watch not because he is a great magician, but
because he is a much better entertainer," said Babak Borhan, a postdoctoral
student in the Nakanishi lab. "It's fun to watch how he interacts with people."
Professor Nakanishi tutored Columbia chemistry professor Ged Parkin in the
dark arts, and Professor Parkin has also become a frequent performer.
He began doing card tricks in his late teens, mainly at wedding receptions
in Japan, to avoid singing duties at such ceremonies. He moved on to more
complicated tricks, usually trying them out first on his wife, Yasuko. "Her
reaction, that's my barometer," Professor Nakanishi said. They celebrate 50 years
of marriage in November.
No one has yet figured out his favorite card trick, in which he picks the card
an observer has chosen. And it may be his rapport with the audience that keeps
attention focused on his patter, and not on his hands.
"You have to convince the audience you are a good magician in the first two
or three tricks," Professor Nakanishi said. "Then they fall into your hands.
"Magic is antiphysics, so it can't really exist. But it shares one thing with
science. I can explain the principle behind a good science experiment in 15
seconds; the same with magic. But I never discuss how I perform an illusion."
He also never does tricks that involve mixing chemicals. For that, there are
plenty of opportunities in the lab.
This document is available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/pr/. To regularly receive science and technology press releases via e-mail, send a message to rjn2@columbia.edu.
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